In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, we, the inventors, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. We also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of plum tree which has been denominated varietally as ‘Plumred XII’.
During a typical blooming season we isolate as seed parents both individual and groups of different plum trees by covering them with screen houses. A hive of bees is placed inside each such house, and bouquets to provide pollen from different plum, apricot, and interspecific hybrid trees are placed in buckets near the trees approximately every two days for the duration of the bloom. During 2007 one such house containing ‘Black Majesty’ plum tree (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 19,527) was crossed by us in this manner. To pollinate this plum tree, we selected bouquets from several sources of plum trees without keeping specific written details. Upon reaching maturity the fruit from this plum tree was harvested, and the seeds were removed, cracked, stratified and germinated as a group with the label “H21”. They were grown as seedlings on their own root in our greenhouse and upon reaching dormancy transplanted to a cultivated area of our experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the summer of 2011 the claimed variety was selected by us as a single plant from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of plum tree, we asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original tree in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is similar to its seed parent, ‘Black Majesty’ plum (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 19,527), by having a medium size tree, by blooming in the medium to late season, by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is firm, juicy, and very sweet, but is distinguished therefrom by producing fruit that is somewhat larger in size, that is semi-freestone instead of clingstone in type, that is red instead of black in skin color, that is full red instead of yellow in flesh color, and that matures about thirty days later.
The present variety is most similar to ‘Plumred IX’ interspecific tree (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 23,719), by having a medium to large size tree, by being self-unfruitful, by blooming in the mid to late season, and by producing fruit that is nearly full red in skin color, mostly red in flesh color, and very sweet, but is distinguished therefrom by producing fruit that is semi-freestone instead of clingstone in type, that is much larger in size, and that matures about thirty days later.